A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions reports that most people thanked for something they did not do let the thanks stand, and then set about being helpful to whoever thanked them.
Two studies ask what people feel on being thanked for a kindness somebody else performed, and what they do next
Nearly everyone, it appears, has at some time accepted thanks that was meant for somebody else. What happens in the minutes afterwards is the subject of Thanks I Did Not Earn: Misdirected Gratitude, Correction, and Quiet Repayment, a paper by Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, and Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, both of the School of Underlying Conditions.
A school that spends its days below ground level is not often asked what people feel. We were pleased to be asked, and more pleased to find the answer was about the size of a seminar room.
— Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, School of Underlying Conditions
Two studies anchor the paper. In the first, 388 adults were invited to remember an occasion of misplaced thanks, and 301 were able to. In the second, 168 students arrived at a room laid out for them in advance and were thanked for it by a fellow participant. Roughly three in eight set the matter straight on each occasion. The remainder went on to offer about twice as much of their own time as anyone else in the study, and offered most of it to the person who had thanked them.
For the University, the paper is evidence of a research community willing to carry its habits of careful attention into rooms it does not usually enter, and to report what it finds there in proportion. Dr Obiora said the work had “returned the School to its ordinary business with a slightly different view of the people it shares a kitchen with, which we are choosing to regard as an outcome”.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.8brqie.